By Marc Holt
I am an atheist. I don’t believe in a ‘god’.
I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell. I don’t believe
that we need religion to force us to behave peacefully, justly, and
honestly towards each other. John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine there’s
no heaven’. Instead, I would like you to imagine a lot more
than anything John said.
Imagine if we tore down the churches, the mosques, the temples
and all the other places of worship, and used them to build houses
for the poor and homeless instead. Wouldn’t the world be
a better place?
Imagine if we made all the priests, monks, nuns, rabbis and other
so-called holy people disrobe, leave their cloisters, and become
productive members of society instead. We would have legions of
mostly highly educated men (and some women) helping mankind, instead
of hiding their lives away. They would have to face life, instead
of spending their lives preparing to die. Fear drives these people.
They need to overcome their fear and learn to live every day, dare
I say it, like it is their last day. One day, it will be their
last day. Will they be able to look back on their lives when that
day comes and be proud of the life they have lived? Will they be
able to say that they have helped others become better people?
Hiding behind robes and walls does not make them better people,
does it? We have all heard of the priests who sodomized children.
The terrorists use religion as their excuse to murder thousands
of people. But the terrorists are misfits who cannot face their
lives. They prefer to die, and selfishly take many other people
with them. Do any of these people, holy people or terrorists, deserve
our admiration or support?
Imagine if we stopped wasting paper and ink printing holy books
and used the materials to print children’s educational books
to teach rational thought instead of superstition. Those books
would teach children how to question ideas and learn to think for
themselves. We could even employ the disrobed holy people to teach
from those books. As a result, they would feel so much better because
they would be helping prepare the next generation to make a useful
contribution to the world and their fellow man. Isn’t that
something to aspire to?
Imagine if we stopped classifying people by their religion, or
their race, and started looking at them as human beings instead.
We would see that they have the same dreams, aspirations and needs
as we do. We all have to eat. We all want to love and be loved.
We all love our children dearly. None of us would feel hatred if
we could only see each other as people. Have you ever looked closely
at the people of other religions you have been vilifying? What
do you see?
Imagine if we stopped praying for things in the hope that a ‘supreme
being’ might actually care what we want. Who can honestly
prove that prayer works? Let’s be realistic here. If you
were to set up an experiment to have millions of, say, Christians
around the world join in prayer at the same time to stop the terrorists,
do you really think those prayers would work? Of course not! Instead,
it would be far more productive to sit down together and examine
what is causing the problem and then work out a solution rationally.
You can apply this principal to anything in your life. Your boss
is considering a promotion in the company? Will praying help you
get it? Or would you be better off thinking about how to impress
the boss? If you think about what your boss needs and expects from
you, and then you gratify his expectation, you will increase your
chances many time over. Prayer can’t do that. I know where
I would bet my money, don’t you?
Imagine if you saved your money instead of giving it to religions.
Most divorces result from financial problems in one way or another.
That money could help provide a better education for your children.
It could provide a security cushion for you and your family so
that you are happier together. Money doesn’t buy happiness,
but it does make it easier to achieve your goals, and that is how
you can be happier. The money you give to your religion merely
helps enslave people to one way of thinking. Wouldn’t you
rather be free and happy?
Imagine if you were to start thinking for yourself, instead of
quoting verses from books written by men hundreds or even thousands
of years ago. What do those men have to do with our modern world?
Did they have the knowledge we take for granted today? Even the
most rabid religionist knows that the world is round. How? It has
been proved by scientists. What is the point of forbidding people
to eat certain kinds of food, such as pork or beef, simply because
some ignorant ‘holy man’ a long time ago said you shouldn’t
eat them? Actually, the ban on eating pork, or butchering animals
to Muslim halal or Jewish kosher standards made sense when they
had no refrigerators. Draining the blood ensured that the meat
would stay fresher longer. Their ban on eating certain type of
seafood made sense for the same reason. But it makes absolutely
no sense these days, does it? Religious leaders turned the ban
into a weapon to control their followers. Instead of saying, “That
doesn’t make sense any more”, you continue to blindly
follow the old ways, instead of thinking rationally and making
decisions based on common sense. Why not free your mind, body and
soul instead?
Imagine if world leaders were to stop using religion as an excuse
to grab and hold onto power. We all know that power corrupts and
that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So why do we continue
to let unbalanced men hungry for power who cannot think rationally
lead us into wars that destroy lives and cause so much misery?
How could anyone capable of thinking rationally continue to believe
in any religion in this day and age?
If you were thinking rationally, religion would not make any sense
at all. Instead of quoting from the Bible, the Koran, or any other ‘holy’ text,
you would be thinking rationally. You would be thinking for yourself.
You would not blindly follow rules set by someone from thousands
of years ago with a fraction of our knowledge of the world. You
would care about your fellow man, instead of trying to classify
or demonize them because they don’t think the same as you.
Wouldn’t that make more sense?
Any rational man, looking at religion, can see that religious
thought is ‘wrong thought’. It robs you of the power
to make rational decisions. Instead of looking for rational, humanist
solutions to problems you continue to make the same mistakes over
and over again. It blinds you to the beauty and love that exists
in the world today. Only rational thought, and a belief in mankind,
can turn our world into a paradise NOW.
Do you really want to live your life trying to fulfill unrealistic
expectations set by religion in the hope you will go to a ‘better
place’ after you die? What about the here and now?
Doesn’t it make so much better sense to work to achieve paradise
today? To make your life, and the lives of everyone around you,
better?
Isn’t it time we stopped the cycle and resolved to turn
our world into a better place instead? If enough of us start thinking
like this we can do it. But you have to want to do it. No one else,
especially ‘god’, ‘allah’ or any other
deity, will do it for you.
The hippies back in the 1960’s said, “What if they
gave a war and nobody went?”
I ask you, “What if you gave up religion and started living
your life for today instead?”
No one has ever come back from the dead. Not even Jesus, despite
what is written in the Bible. No one has ever come back and told
us they actually saw god or the devil when they died. It just doesn’t
happen. We only get this life. Let’s make it a good life.
Believe in yourself…not in some mythical deity no one has
ever seen. Give up religion and become a thinking, rational human
being instead. It’s only common sense, isn’t it?
Marc Holt
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